


Southbound

by Luzula



Category: due South
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Aftermath, Female-Centric, Finding A New Life, Gen, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 09:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12009876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula/pseuds/Luzula
Summary: Victoria heard the shot, and saw him fall. Her outstretched hand reached for him a second longer before reaction caught up to her and she dropped it. Ben was--he was-- Later, she could think about it later. For now, she had to survive.





	Southbound

**Author's Note:**

> Unfinished WIP. I've had this lying around for ages, and I know I'm never going to finish it. But I still like it--I don't think I've seen a longer story that takes on Victoria after VS in a way that's about her rather than her relationship with Ben. I think it's still worth reading even if it's not finished (or I guess I wouldn't post it).
> 
> I am very grateful to akamine_chan and Sage who gave me insightful beta comments (they were both familiar with the area I was setting it in). I wish I could've done more justice to their comments by finishing the story, but hopefully I've fixed the immediate problems they pointed out.

Victoria heard the shot, and saw him fall.

Her outstretched hand reached for him a second longer before reaction caught up to her and she dropped it. Ben was--he was-- Later, she could think about it later. For now, she had to survive.

Acting on instinct, she changed her plans. The police knew she was on this train--she had to get off or be trapped. Grabbing her bag, she tugged at the door on the other side of the train. It was stuck, and she cursed at it, feeling the train gather speed. Adrenaline gave her strength, and it opened. The ground was already rushing by.

A second's hesitation, and she jumped.

There was a flash of pain as she landed awkwardly, fell, then bumped into something hard. "Fuck," she gasped, trying to clear her head. She glanced around, saw a maintenance building of some kind, and ran for it.

Lucky she hadn't hurt her legs in the fall. Or she had, Victoria realized as she took stock of the situation behind the building. She'd struck her shin on something--she'd have the mother of all bruises there tomorrow--and her shoulder hurt, but she was functional.

She could still see the train departing down the track. She could have been on that train. She and Ben.

Victoria deliberately dug her fingers into her shin, and the pain made her gasp. It also made her focus. She was a long way from safe--time to think about might-have-beens later. She was close to the edge of the rail yard, with just a few tracks between her and the edge of it.

Apparently the police still thought she was on that train, because she made it out of the rail yard and into a fast food restaurant, where she slipped into a bathroom. She took a knife from her bag and began quickly and deliberately sawing her hair off. It was curly--noone was going to notice if it was uneven. She cut it short, just an inch or so from her scalp, and then took out a spray bottle of peroxide, applying it to her hair and using a comb to spread it out. She'd been intending to do this on the train anyway--she was far too recognizable.

Someone tried the handle of the door, but she ignored it. There were other bathrooms. Victoria let the bleach work for a while, then washed it out. Looking at herself in the mirror, she saw bedraggled unevenly pale locks. She dried it vigorously with a paper towel and spiked it up a bit. There, that was better. She could work the punk look.

On the dirty wet floor of the bathroom lay her dark wavy locks of hair. She had a brief stab of remorse as she remembered Ben burying his hands in her hair, then she bared her teeth and gathered up the hair, stuffing it deep into the waste paper bin, covering it with used paper towels. Gone. All gone.

She changed her coat for a worn denim jacket and stuffed the coat in her bag. Then she strode out past the woman waiting with a wailing toddler.

She was no longer Victoria Metcalf, or her sister, either.

In her bag was a new ID waiting for her. She hadn't spent ten years in prison without learning a trick or two. There was also an ID for a man, but she wouldn't have any use for that anymore.

She needed to get out of Chicago.

If she was lucky, the police still thought she was on the train. If she wasn't, which she had to assume, they would be searching the area. She glanced toward the rental car service right next to the train station, and hesitated. No, she couldn't risk it, not even with her changed looks and the new ID. She thought about taking a taxi to the airport, but they'd certainly be watching that by the time she got there. Same for the bus terminal. She could go to ground in the city, maybe, but she didn't have any connections here, and beyond that, there was an itch under her skin to get away, get out, be gone from this place where everything had fallen apart on her.

So where? How? An image of her uncle dropped into her mind; he was a trucker who drove the route into Anchorage and back south again. He'd often picked up hitchhikers, liked the company. Not exactly a risk-free route out of Chicago, but she had a feeling there were none of those. Probably not a good idea to take a taxi all the way to a truck stop, that would be remembered. Local bus, then, they couldn't be monitoring all of those. And then taxi.

She jumped on a crowded bus, feeling some measure of safety in the crowd. At the end of the line, in the southern part of the city, she flagged down a taxi.

"Can you drive me to the truck stop, the closest one?" she said, hoping there was one.

"On I-57?"

"Yeah."

"Sure." He pulled out into the traffic.

Victoria took a few deep breaths. Focus. Don't fall apart. Don't think about anything else but leaving Chicago behind. She was still going on leftover adrenaline, and she fidgeted in the seat, trying to find a comfortable position. Her shin ached, and so did her shoulder, pulsing with pain in time with the beat of her heart. She wished she had some painkillers.

"This what you want?" the driver said, and pulled up at a truck stop, looking much like the one she'd seen outside Anchorage, except bigger.

"Yeah." She paid the driver and he left without a backwards glance.

Victoria went into the truck stop, buying herself a sandwich and something to drink. She glanced around as she ate. Men, mostly, but a few women as well, but one of them looked like a hooker. She'd have to be careful not to be taken as one herself.

Victoria set her jaw. If there was one place she didn't want to end up, that was it.

Right, time to move. She went to check out the trucks parked outside.

One driver was her own age, maybe, tall with short-cropped hair. But she didn't like his look--there was a meanness to the curl of his lip. Another one was just locking the back doors of his truck. He was maybe forty-five or fifty, soft around the edges with a bit of a paunch, probably balding under the trucker's cap. Victoria had had a lot of practice judging people at first glance--prison did that to you--and he didn't look like someone who would turn violent. She could be wrong, of course, but she had her gun. She could handle herself.

Time to go for it. She ran her hand through her hair, then went up to him.

"Excuse me?" she said, pitching her voice high, her eyes wide and earnest.

"Yeah?" He looked up. She hunched a little, crossing her arms in front of her chest, not showing it off like a hooker would.

"Hi, um, I wonder...I need help, and maybe you could..." she trailed off, playing the damsel in distress. "Which way are you going?"

"Down south to Dallas."

She made her face light up. "Oh, that's so lucky! See, I have family in Houston, and I have to get down there. But I--I don't know how I'm going to manage it. Do you think I could share the ride?"

He hesitated, looking around to see if anyone was watching them. Victoria let her mouth tremble a little, as if she was on the verge of tears, and looked up at him. The man scratched his neck and frowned in thought. She could see him softening, but didn't let the satisfaction show on her face. "All right then, I guess you could." He looked around. "I'm not supposed to--but I guess there's no harm in it. My driving partner's off this week, so there's space for you."

He opened the door of the truck for her. "Come on up, then. I was just about to leave. "

She climbed up, suppressing the wince as her shoulder flashed in pain. Along with the pain, there was a sudden burst of doubt--the cabin of the truck felt like a trap closing around her. _Relax_ , she told herself. _You can wrap him 'round your little finger. And if not..._ She still had the gun.

Her mood eased as the truck rumbled out onto I-57 and then headed south. The destination had been purely random, but it felt right. The train had been heading east, and she didn't want to go that way. Not without--she cut the thought off. And north--no.

South felt like a new direction, one with no baggage.

She watched the traffic flowing along the interstate. The driver had the radio on low, and Victoria let her mind go blank, listening to the meaningless jumble of words and music, and watching the lines on the road snaking into the distance. She couldn't deal with it all yet. Maybe she should be making plans, but she couldn't do that, either. She felt like a compass whose true north was gone, spinning aimlessly in circles.

The driver cleared his throat. "You don't sound like a Texas girl."

"I'm not," Victoria said. "My parents moved down there a couple of years ago." She elaborated the story in her head, in case he asked for more. But he didn't.

"Right. Anyways, I'm Pete." He reached out his hand to her, and she shook it. He had a warm, fleshy grip. Or no, she realized--it was her hand that was cold.

"Erin," she said, the lie coming easily. She'd been prepared to give her name.

"It's a long drive," Pete said. "I sure won't mind the company." He smiled tentatively at her, and she made herself smile back. Not too much, though--she wouldn't want him to think she was flirting.

After a while, they stopped at another truck stop to eat. Pete got a burger with fries and so did she, as well as a bottle of ibuprofen for her shoulder. She ate mechanically, then went out to get some air before they went on. Not that there was any fresh air--diesel fumes hung heavy around her from an idling truck. There were some pathetic potted plants outside the restaurant.

She broke off a daisy from a pot and began pulling the petals. Alive, dead, alive, dead, alive...

Dead. She looked at the sole remaining petal and threw the flower on the ground, grinding her heel down on it. What could a goddamn fucking flower know about it, anyway? She climbed up to her seat in the truck again, waiting for Pete to come out.

It had to have been a serious hit. He'd just crumpled to the ground. She saw it, over and over--Ben running, his hand reaching for hers. Then his expression changing, just half a second before he fell to the ground and didn't get up. It still didn't feel quite real--it was like rewinding a video tape, over and over again, until it wore thin.

She'd held a gun to him herself, in the car. At times, she'd fantasized about shooting him, but when she saw him facing the gun, she'd known she couldn't do it. She didn't want him dead, not really. She wanted--

Victoria took a deep breath. She had to get herself under control before Pete came out again. Her agitation could probably be in character, even--she'd given him the impression she was in some kind of trouble--but she couldn't bear to let him see it. Leftover prison instincts, probably--show weakness and you were fair game. She pushed it all down viciously.

Pete came out of the restaurant and got in the car. The truck rumbled to life and swung ponderously out on the interstate again. To distract herself, she thought about the police. Had she gotten away clean? She might have. Maybe. Part of her hardly cared any more, and another part couldn't stop calculating the potential trail she'd left behind.

Victoria yawned. She'd been riding her nerves hard the last couple of days, and the white noise and the sameness of the road through the windshield made her eyes droop and her head loll sideways against the strap of the seatbelt.

The lack of noise woke her. She blinked awake with a jolt of fear, her mouth tasting foul and her eyes gritty. Where was she?

"Time to stop for the night," Pete said, and she remembered. The neon sign of a cheap motel shone in front of them.

"I'm sleeping in the truck," Pete said, jerking his thumb back to the sleeping space behind the seats. "You hard up for money?"

Victoria rubbed at her eyes, thinking fast. She'd given him the impression she was broke, or why would she have to hitch a ride? So she had to maintain that (even though she had some cash with her, and a bank account she was fairly sure no one could trace to her old identity).

"I've got a little bit," she said. "Enough for a room."

She halfway expected him to hit on her, and he did. He smiled in a way that was probably meant to be flirtatious, but just looked pathetic to her, and said, "You feel lonely over there, you're welcome to come over here."

She was expecting it, so she didn't stiffen, just shook her head and smiled a little, to soften the rejection. She didn't want to antagonize him.

He looked a bit sheepish, but just said, "No harm in asking, right? G'night."

"Good night," she said. She went to the motel, and shut herself in blessed solitude for a night, even if it was just a cheap motel room with sleazy bedcovers.

***

They got up early and were off, driving south. Victoria was wide awake now, and her wits felt clearer after sleeping.

She should make plans. What on earth would she do when she got down to Dallas? She'd had plans, of course, but they'd all revolved around Ben. She'd gone to Chicago to deal with him once and for all, deal with what he'd done to her and with his hold on her. No, not just deal with it--take control of it. But it was as if those few days--already they felt like something that had happened weeks ago--had been some sort of singularity, a black hole. She'd gone in blind, despite her carefully laid plans. Her actions, his actions, neither of them had had any sort of control over it all.

And now here she was--sitting in a truck with a random destination. Victoria almost laughed, but it stuck in her throat.

She closed her eyes, and didn't, for once, see Ben falling to the ground. She saw Ben touching her, his feelings naked in his eyes. Felt the tug of wanting to fall into that feeling forever, the opposite urge to crush him under her heel and watch him suffer, and the way the intersection of those feelings cut her heart to pieces.

And now he could be dead.

Her throat constricted, and she found herself crying, in heaving sobs that made her gasp for breath and her nose clog up. She fought it, but it just kept coming.

"Hey, there." She flinched instinctively away from Pete's hand patting her shoulder, and he took it off her.

"You running from a man?" he asked her. Through her puffed-up and swollen eyes, she followed his gaze to the bruises showing on her forearm. From jumping off the train, but he didn't know that. Hell, his conclusion was the logical one, and it was even true, in a twisted kind of way.

"Yeah," she said shakily. She didn't have to feign the shakiness.

"Sorry about coming on to you last night," he said, looking awkward, his thick fingers drumming against the steering wheel. "I'll get you where you're going safe, don't you worry."

"Thanks." She breathed deeply, trying to get herself under control. Chivalrous. It figured. It was apparently her thing to play men by using real emotion--and she hadn't even tried for it this time.

With Ben it had been deliberate, but it'd almost cost her the whole scheme. Memories flashed in her mind--his hand gently stroking her hair out of the way, her own inability to stop touching him, despite all he'd done. Lying curled up against his chest afterward, the only thing that made her keep her resolve was the thought that she'd have him with her, afterwards.

Victoria clenched her fist until the nails bit into her palm. Damn it, _stop thinking about Ben_.

She stretched out and turned the music up. Pete didn't protest.

***

"Just let me off somewhere near the bus station," she said, as they were driving into Dallas.

"Do you have money for the bus?" Pete asked her. "I can help you out if you need it."

"No, it's fine. I'll make it." She was unexpectedly touched by the offer.

"Right." He looked as if he wanted to say more, but fell into his usual quiet as they navigated the city. Then, as she was climbing down from the truck, he said, "Good luck."

"Thanks," she said, and meant it. She watched him drive away.

Right, the last place she should go was Houston, in the event that the police was on her trail and questioned Pete about her. It was getting late in the day, and the lights of the city glowed against the darkening sky. Victoria was suddenly dead tired.

She ended up at a cheap hotel and slept for twelve hours. When she woke, she opened her eyes to the stained ceiling and stared at it. She had no earthly idea of what to do now, or even why she should get out of bed. In all probability, there was no one in the world who cared about what happened to her.

She thought, in an experimental kind of way, about death. Putting her gun to her temple. Eating a handful of pills.

No. Fuck that.

She was going to live. She wasn't going to be the Juliet to Ben's Romeo (assuming Romeo had put Juliet in prison for ten years, and Juliet had then tried to convince him to elope by framing him for murder). Victoria laughed. It was a rusty laugh, but still. Whatever she was, she wasn't suicidal.

She also wasn't going back to Chicago, to Ben. It had been a fucked-up disaster, and to go back would be like another kind of suicide. She was at least sane enough to know that. Or if not sanity, then at least she had some sense of self-preservation.

Abruptly the room felt too much like a prison, the bed too much like a bunk. Victoria got up, dressed, grabbed her bag, and checked out of the hotel. She went to a diner and stuffed herself, then made her way to the bus station and got on the next bus out that wasn't bound for Houston.

She leaned her head against the glass and watched the landscape go by. Apparently she was going west towards New Mexico. The landscape outside the bus window was a scrubby, scruffy lowland, dry-looking, with the heat from the sun shimmering in waves above the ground. The bus passed a sign saying "Sweetwater", and Victoria smiled. Didn't look to be much of that around.

She was on the left-hand side of the bus, the south side, where the sun shone in. Most people were sitting on the other side, but Victoria liked the warmth of it on her face. Alaska was a cold place, and prison even more so. She pushed up the sleeves of her shirt and closed her eyes, soaking in the sunlight.

The sun and road and engine noise made her drowsy, and she woke, blinking. She reached up without thinking to get her hair out of her face, but her hand found nothing. She rubbed at her eyes instead. Surreptitiously, she checked that her valuables were still there, tucked inside her jeans on the window side. They were.

On impulse, she joined the people getting off the bus. She she could as well get off here as anywhere else. Besides, she was hungry.

They were in a smaller town, without that oppressive sense of being stuck among millions of people, all busy, all going somewhere, and sweeping Victoria along with them, out of control. She'd hated Chicago, and if she hadn't had a purpose in going there, she'd have bolted the first day. Victoria had grown up a small-town girl, and while she'd had the same hopeless longing to get the hell out of there as any teenager, she knew she wasn't cut out for the city. Ben had felt the same, she could tell.

Victoria sighed and uprooted the thought, like she was pulling weeds in a garden. Hell of an overgrown garden, she thought with a snort.

To distract herself, she looked around for a place to eat. "Manuela's" read a sign across the street from the bus station, a small local sort of place, not a big chain. It looked nice. The woman behind the counter looked nice, too, middle-aged and round like she'd eaten a lot of the food she served.

"What would you like, honey?" the woman said with a smile. "The enchiladas are the best in town, I can tell you that."

"I'll have that, then," Victoria said. She paid and sat down with her back to the wall, so that she could monitor the room. Her lips twisted. Did she think cops would come rushing in? One of Jolly's associates? It was possible, of course--it wasn't paranoia if you knew they were out to get you.

The woman came with her meal. "You in town to visit? Or just passing through?"

None of her business. "Just passing through," Victoria said shortly, and the woman left. The food was good, though, and Victoria relaxed enough to enjoy it.

So, where to next? Victoria ran her fingers through her hair, still not used to the unfamiliar texture. She didn't relish getting on another bus. Then she almost laughed. Of course--she could get a car now. She had her false ID and driver's licence. She could've done that in Dallas, actually--the only reason she hadn't was that she'd told Pete she'd be getting on the bus, and so she had. Maybe she could've even managed it in Chicago. But she'd still been in shock, and not thinking straight.

Abruptly she got up, going up to the counter. "Can I rent a car somewhere around here? Or buy a used one?"

"You sure can. The car rental is local only, but there's a car dealership a few blocks that way." The woman pointed out the window.

Victoria half expected there to be some sort of trouble when she used her credit card for the first time, the one tied to the account in Erin's name. But there wasn't, of course. She'd paid good money for that ID. And when she got out on the road, behind the wheel of the boring green Honda she'd bought, a little bit of the tension in her gut uncoiled. Maybe it was just an illusion of being in control, but if so, it was a damn good one. Her hands on the steering wheel, her foot on the pedal, a long highway stretching out in front of her.

Victoria grinned into the wind. It felt like the first honest smile in a long time. What if she could get free of the whole fucking mess? Ben, Jolly, prison, all of it. She caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror on her sun visor, and the woman she saw there looked like someone else, short bleached hair a rumpled mess above an expression she didn't recognize.

After the first rush, wariness caught up with her again, and she slowed down, got within a reasonable range of the speed limit. Getting caught by the highway patrol wouldn't help her any.

***

Victoria was tired, and the shoulder she'd hurt when she jumped off the train still ached a little. She took an ibuprofen and dropped into sleep quickly on the anonymous motel bed.

A few hours later she was jolted awake again. Victoria clenched her hands in the sheets and tried to breathe. She couldn't move. In the dream, that is, the dream she'd woken up from but which still felt real and tangible like the sheets in her hands. She couldn't move and she didn't know why, straining against invisible bonds while Ben bled out on the station platform. Bright red blood, gushing out of him. Then suddenly her hands were on his chest, in the blood, but it didn't do any good. It stuck to her hands, viscous and slippery, oozing up between her fingers. She'd never be able to get it off her.

Fuck, no. Victoria dug her nails into her arm to drag herself out of it. She hadn't actually seen any of this. It was all in her mind. She'd seen Ben fall, that was all. For all she knew he'd just been hit in the shoulder or something. He might be fine.

Part of her didn't want him to be fine. Part of her wanted him to suffer. Make up your mind, damn it.

She rolled onto her back, got up and went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face. She could call the consulate tomorrow, see if he answered and then just hang up. His warm dark voice would say "Canadian consulate, Constable Benton Fraser speaking. Consulat du Canada..."

No, she couldn't. They might be tracing any suspicious calls to the consulate, and she couldn't take the chance. Besides, she'd decided she would let it go. Let him go.

Victoria rubbed her face dry on a towel. Then she propped herself up on the bed with the pillow behind her back and let the idiocies of late-night television numb her mind.

***

She slept late and woke with a crick in her neck, the television spouting some kind of talk show. Turning it off with a vicious jab of the remote, she got into the shower and tried to scrub herself clean, as if the blood of the dream still clung to her.

Driving made her feel better again, like she was free. Just seeing the far-off horizon ahead of her made her relax. She'd never seen the horizon in prison. The landscape was dry here, almost like a desert, with scruffy little bushes that looked like they shouldn't be able to survive. It was about as far as you could get from Alaska. Did it ever rain here? It left a free line of sight, anyway.

Victoria drifted from town to town, never staying more than a day. She got to the Sierra Nevada, but the peaks, even with so little snow, reminded her of things she didn't want to think about (cold, whispered words, her fingers in his mouth) so she turned around, taking another route back through the dry southwest.

The siren song of Las Vegas sucked her in, as it had so many other people. Jolly would've given his life (ha ha) to make it big in Vegas--he'd talked about it sometimes, about the big bucks to be made here. Looking at the people in the casinos, she doubted he would have made any money here. Likely he'd have been suckered out of it like all the other suckers being played here. Jolly always thought he was a much bigger fish than he actually was.

Victoria didn't play. She just watched, and that got her noticed. She saw a guy in a shiny suit talk to another guy in another shiny suit, the glint of his eye as he watched her, the tell-tale bulge of a gun inside his jacket. They weren't playing either.

Victoria gathered her wits and left the place. She wasn't a big fish any more than Jolly had been, and she knew it.

Instead, she got in her car and drove out of the maelstrom that was Vegas, onto a small desert road petering out in the middle of nowhere. She stopped the car, looked up at the night sky. Even when she'd gotten a fold of the land between herself and the city, she could still see the glow of it dulling the light of the stars.

She probably could work her way into Vegas if she wanted to. Could be a part of that fast-spinning world, the city that soaked up money and cards and lies as hungrily as water soaked into the dry ground. She'd learned a trick or two in prison. Maybe had a few contacts, even.

But did she want to?

It had never been about the money for her, not really. When Jolly and his friends first had talked her into that bank robbery, she'd done it because she was dependent on them. She'd been young and stupid, and still kind of flattered that someone like Jolly, who was dangerous and edgy, had been interested in her. And the diamonds...well, it was supposed to be her bid to get out once and for all, but it got more complicated than that.

Victoria wanted to tell her younger self to run and don't look back. At the very least, staying with someone who slapped you around when he was drunk was a bad idea. Well, it was too late for that, and at least Jolly had got what was coming to him. Victoria clenched her hands on the steering wheel. Some things she didn't regret at all, and pulling that trigger was one of them.

When she got out of prison, the money had been a means to an end--getting even with Ben and getting some of her own back.

But going back into crime for the money? Or for the thrill of it? No. Not if there was another way.

She just wondered what that other way was.

***

Victoria drifted for another few weeks. She saw the Grand Canyon, the petrified forest strewn across the desert, the cliff dwellings up in the canyon walls at Gila. At the end of another day, at another motel, she stretched, trying to get the crick in her neck from driving to loosen up. She couldn't keep drifting around like this forever.

She liked the southwest--the baking heat, the dry scrub, the red rock. For no reason, she suddenly remembered the little restaurant and the woman with the warm smile. Victoria shrugged. Why not? The town was a good size--not a big city, but not so small that she'd excite the sort of small-town gossip that she'd known too well in Alaska. And there were worse ways to pick a place by than a remembered smile.

Victoria made her way back there and sat cross-legged on the bed in her motel room, searching the classifieds for apartments to rent. She sucked on the pen while she read, and then circled the likely ones.

She had no idea what she was actually going to do here--she had no job, no friends, no nothing. But she didn't think about that. One step at a time.

If she'd actually lived a normal life for the last ten years, she would've known what you needed to know to rent an apartment. But she could think on her feet. When the apartment manager asked about her rental history, she said, "I don't have a rental history. I'm so sorry," she said humbly. "I lived with my boyfriend for years, but he was the only one on the lease. But I can pay the rent."

It turned out that being able to pay rent and a security deposit was the important part, and that was no problem. So now she had an apartment. It was completely empty, though. She stared at the bag that held all her worldly possessions and wondered what on earth she was doing playing house like this. What did she know about how ordinary people lived their lives? Oh, she knew how to survive in prison, but none of that was going to help her now. She didn't even have a goddamn mattress to sleep on.

Well, she'd decided she was going to try this. Wasn't it a little early in the game to give up? No bed, right. That was at least a concrete problem she could tackle.

She went to the local thrift store and got herself a rickety bed, a couch, a kitchen table and two chairs (although who she thought was going to sit on the second one she didn't know), a couple of pots and pans, plates, forks, knives and spoons, and so on.

An old lady interrupted her knitting to enter her purchases into the old-fashioned cash register. "Are you new in town, then?"

"Yeah, I've just moved in."

"I thought that accent wasn't from around here." The woman's eyes brightened with something that Victoria suspected was a nosy curiosity. Before she could ask more, Victoria headed off any further questions by asking if she could pay them to deliver the furniture.

A neighbor offered to help her carry the furniture in. He seemed friendly enough, and asked about why she'd moved, too. She had to remind herself that he wasn't out to get her--this was the kind of polite conversation that ordinary people made.

When she'd gotten her new things arranged, the apartment still looked empty and bare--there was none of the clutter of everyday stuff that people accumulate through their lives. With a pang, she realized that it reminded her of Ben's apartment.

Letting out a frustrated growl, she threw on her jacket and went out, locking the door behind her. God damn him, why did everything remind her of him? Anyway, she was hungry, and didn't have any food in the fridge. Victoria stalked down the street, looking for someplace to eat.

She was actually fairly close to Manuela's, that place she'd gone the first time she'd been here. It was just a few more blocks down the street. Victoria took a deep breath and did her best to wipe the black look off her face before she went in. That same woman was behind the counter, refilling the coffeepot and looking as if nothing could ever disturb her peace of mind. Victoria wondered if the woman would recognize her.

"What would you like?" she said. It didn't look as if she recognized her.

She studied the meny. "Chicken enchiladas, please. With...red sauce."

"Coming right up. You just sit down, honey."

Victoria picked the only free table, between a noisy family of four and two older men. The woman, who by her nametag was indeed Manuela, soon came with her plate of enchiladas and set it down with a motherly smile.

Motherly, right. Victoria ate her food and pictured her own mother: hard-edged and hard-working, and a little too fond of the bottle. She'd worked hard not because she expected to get anywhere, but because it was the only way to keep her nose above the waterline once the father of her children left her by the wayside.

Of course, at the time Victoria didn't have that kind of perspective. All she knew was that her mom was never there, and when she was, she was drinking. Victoria suspected her mom had been relieved when Victoria left home when she was sixteen, no matter the company she was keeping.

Victoria understood her mom better now, but it didn't make much difference--the feelings were still the same underneath the surface. It didn't matter anyway. Her mom had died while Victoria was in prison. She'd frozen to death, apparently, but Victoria could read between the lines. Alcohol and the Alaskan winter didn't mix too well.

"Would you like the rest of that to go?" Manuela's voice asked.

Victoria started. The restaurant was almost empty now, and she'd left half the food on her plate.

"Yeah, sure. Thanks. It's good, I just...got distracted."

"No problem." Manuela took the plate and soon returned with a bag. "I gave you what was left of the cobbler, too. You seem like you could use it." She gave Victoria that smile again.

"Thanks," Victoria said again. She was a total stranger--why was the woman being so nice to her?

***

Victoria spent a lot of the next day checking out the countryside. Her apartment didn't feel like any sort of home, bare as it was, and it wasn't like there was anything else she needed to do.

Get a job, she supposed. People had jobs, it was what they did--she'd have to get a job, too, when her money ran out. But it wasn't like she had any special skills, and she didn't exactly feel like flipping burgers at McDonald's.

She squinted, pulling down her baseball cap so it shaded her eyes. The reddish rock she was sitting on was warm to the touch from the sun, and the vegetation was scrubby and spiny, looking like it needed some rain. Some of it was fat with stored-up water. Cactuses or something, she supposed. Ben would've known, she thought with defiance, though she didn't know what it was she was defying.

Victoria screwed the lid off a bottle of water and took a long drink. She loved the warmth--it was like she was still soaking it up. The nights were colder than she'd expected. She'd dreamed last night again, woken up cold and sweating and with the taste of fear in her mouth. But it was day now, and warm.

Victoria scratched at her arm. She was starting to tan, the skin flaking off a little from where she'd burned it. At least something about her was changing. It felt good--shedding her skin like a snake, maybe. She wondered what was underneath.

***

When she got back to the apartment, she opened the fridge and sighed. Normal people had food in their fridge. Right. It didn't magically appear like prison food. Although god, she never wanted to eat prison food again in her life.

She headed out to buy groceries. One of the neighbors nodded at her on the stairs, the guy who'd helped her carry up the furniture, and she returned the nod. A scruffy gray cat was nosing around the garbage cans outside the building, but it made a startled retreat around the corner when she looked at it.

Victoria returned with some bread and cheese for sandwiches, cereal and milk for breakfast tomorrow, and a box of pasta mix for tonight that she could just heat up. She didn't feel up to real cooking, not that she'd had much practise at it.

Eating by the small table in the kitchen, she wished she had a TV, or a radio--anything to break the silence in the apartment. She wasn't used to being so alone. In prison, she'd had a cellmate, and it's not like she wanted that back, but there was nobody else breathing in this room, no heart beating but hers.

Damn it, don't think about Ben, she cautioned herself automatically before the thought even arose.

Maybe it was just that he was the first warm body she'd been in bed with after ten years. Anyone might have done.

Victoria planted her feet on the floor and stood up. It was Friday, wasn't it? She could just go out and get laid if she wanted. Maybe it would be good for her.

She took the car--no way did she want to get stuck at someone's apartment without transport of her own--and drove around to see if she could find a club or something. Her own neighborhood was quiet, but not exactly fancy. She passed a diner, then a grocery store that was still open. She hesitated, then stopped and got herself some condoms. No sense in not planning ahead.

Turned out there were no real clubs--the town was too small. And the couple of bars she saw weren't the type of place she imagined that she'd be able to pick someone up. Well, Austin was only a couple of hours from here; she'd drive there tomorrow and try again. If she didn't lose her nerve.

Driving there the day after, she wondered if she was trying to prove something to herself. But so what if she was. Austin was unfamiliar, but it wasn't too hard to find a club there. She parked near a place where she could hear the pumping bass of loud music through the car, then walked through the cool night towards the club.

Hot humid air, smelling of sweat and smoke, enveloped her as she went inside. The bouncer had looked her over and let her in--the dress code didn't seem strict, which was good, because she was only wearing a pair of jeans and a top she'd gotten at the thrift store. It was a little worn, but it was bright red and had a low neckline, which was really all she needed.

The music beat deep in her bones. She made her way through the throng of people towards the bar and ordered a beer. The cold liquid felt good going down her throat. It was a noisy crowd of people, mostly pretty young, but she wasn't the oldest person there, either. She idly checked out the guys.

When she'd finished her beer, she got out on the dance floor. It'd been ages since she last danced, and she felt a bit awkward until she closed her eyes and let the beat carry her along. This was good. No thinking, just moving. She almost forgot why she was there, until she bumped into someone harder than usual--the dance floor was full, so it's not like you could avoid it.

The guy said something, raising his palms.

"What?" she mimed.

"I said sorry," he shouted into her ear.

"It's fine," she shouted in return.

She saw his eyes dip down, then up. "Drink?" He jerked his thumb towards the bar.

She checked him out. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, not really that good-looking, but he had nice biceps. Sweat gleamed on his neck and arms and formed patches on his white shirt. She could feel herself dripping with it, too, making her spiked-up hair wilt down in curls.

"Sure," she shouted.

It's not like you could have a conversation in this place, but he got her a drink, and she smiled up at him. He leaned a little closer, touching their arms together. Well, this was going fine.

It went on going fine up until she got out of the car, having followed him to his place. Outside the doorway up to his apartment, he crowded her up against the wall, kissing her. She went along with it. This was the goal, right? Get laid.

For a moment it was good, the heat of another body against hers. Then suddenly his tongue pushing into her mouth felt like an invasion, and the weight of his body wasn't turning her on, it was just too much, too close, penning her in, holding her down. Get off me, you asshole, get OFF! She pushed at his shoulders.

"What?" he said.

She pushed harder, and put some distance between them.

"Sorry, I--" She sidled towards the car, maneuvering, figuring the distances between her, the car, the guy.

He looked kind of pissed off. "Hey, I thought you wanted--"

"Sorry, I can't," she said, and ran for the car. He didn't follow her, though, just stood there while she drove off.

Victoria took a deep breath, then another. She rolled down the window and spat, trying to get the guy's taste out of her mouth. This had gone all wrong. But she was in her own space now, in control. She'd gotten away.

When she got home, she took a long, hot shower, washing off the smoke and sweat and beer smell of the club, and washing off the feel of the guy's hands on her. She shivered, despite the hot water. Damn you, Benton Fraser, she thought, almost out of habit. But it wasn't like she didn't want the guy she'd picked up because she couldn't forget about Ben, or something. She just--didn't want the guy in her space.

She masturbated before going to sleep, just to prove that she could bring herself off. She didn't think about anything in particular while doing it. It was okay. And it put her to sleep, anyway.

***

Coming back from the grocery store the next day, she noticed the same gray cat hanging around the trash cans. It looked lean, hungry. On impulse, she took out a piece of ham from her groceries, held it out. The cat kept its distance. She threw the ham, and the cat ate it in one quick gulp.

"Don't encourage it," said a voice behind her. One of the neighbors. "Probably a stray. If you feed it, it'll keep hanging around."

Victoria shrugged non-committally, and the woman went up the stairs. She squatted down, tossed another piece of ham to the cat. It snatched the food, then retreated a safe distance to eat it, staring at her the whole time. One of its ears had a piece missing, like something had taken a bite out of it.

"Hungry, huh?"

The cat meowed, and Victoria jumped a little. She hadn't expected it to actually reply.

"Well, here you go." She threw it another piece of ham.

By the time she went upstairs, she'd gotten the cat to come within a foot of her, but it still wouldn't eat from her hand. She guessed she couldn't blame it. Smart cat.

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, that's all there is. Sorry I couldn't finish it! I know the ending scene, though: there's a scene with the desert blooming after rain, and she goes out there and has a cathartic moment where she realizes she's over Ben and has found a new life for herself. Nature symbolism, I know you're all surprised. But before that, she goes to community college and studies computer programming, also she has a relationship with a woman who's also on the course. Is what I had vaguely planned anyway, who knows how it would've worked out if I actually could have written it.


End file.
